5 Dead in US shooting, police seeking suspects

A shooting at a backyard barbecue in the northeastern US state of Pennsylvania has left five people dead, and at least two suspects are still on the run, police said Thursday.

Four of the victims — three women and one man — died at the scene while another woman succumbed to her wounds in hospital, police said in a statement.

Two men are in critical condition and a woman is in stable condition following the incident that unfolded at a home late Wednesday in the town of Wilkinsburg, they said.

“The ballistic evidence on the scene leads police to believe that two different weapons were discharged from two different people,” the statement said.

No one has been taken into custody and police were urging witnesses to come forward to aid their investigation, which they said was still in its preliminary stage.

Wilkinsburg is located around six miles (10 kilometers) east of the city of Pittsburgh.

Police said shots were fired from an alley and that when partygoers tried to seek cover in the home, someone on the side or backyard adjacent to the residence fired at the back porch, where all four deaths occurred.

Lieutenant Andrew Schurman told AFP that police currently do not believe that anyone in the backyard or at the party fired back during the shooting.

“We’re still trying to identify all the victims and what their connection is to the party,” he said.

Schurman added that the suspects were on foot at the time of the shooting but that it was unclear how they fled the scene.

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Syed Ammar Alavi - is Lahore (Pakistan) based journalist & writer with 25-year experience in print, wire and broadcast forms of journalism. His major fields of interest are politics, film,tv,sports, climate change and technology